


Enough

by JupiterOrchid



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, College, Domestic, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, JJ is a dummy, JJ is trying here, Leaving Home, M/M, Moving In Together, Pining, Self-Esteem Issues, there's a cat in this one, with issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24516967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JupiterOrchid/pseuds/JupiterOrchid
Summary: JJ leaves to Nassau and comes back three years later.
Relationships: JJ/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 138





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> This is not my best work. But it needed to get out of my head. *enter word-vomit*

JJ is boarding a ship to Nassau. He talks his way into a “work for passage and board” arrangement with a captain that is more salt than water and that looks more closely at his bruises than the dates on his documents.

He doesn’t mean to do it. Just sort of packs some necessities after John B calls and ends up at the marina. The ship is leaving in an hour, so he scrapes around his pockets for some coins, buys a stamp.

Pope gets the letter the next day. It’s more of a note, really, and it says something along the lines of: _I’m going to Nassau. We’ll come back soon. I’ll bring you and Kie back presents so wait for us._

There is a post scriptum that goes a little like this: _I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I’m going to miss you,_ a crooked tiny heart in the margins, as if JJ hoped Pope would miss it _._ Pope sees the round, perfect watermark over the _you,_ and he thinks he knows what it might be but, he can’t be sure, because his own vision is blurry and swimming.

Pope looks at the letter every day for weeks and then he tucks it into his least-favorite favorite book and leaves for college.

***

He works as a TA in his third year and part-time at a bakery on campus. That, with the scholarship, is enough to get him out of the dorms, that are kind of overpriced, anyway. All of that just means that he’s really busy and almost always tired, so when he gets up to his fourth-floor apartment, a little sweaty and disheveled from walking all those stairs, he doesn’t recognize him.

Just says “excuse me” because this blonde, wall street looking dude with his shiny shoes and his chinos and his sports coat is right in front of his apartment door, looking around like he’s lost. And then he looks up, and the world stops.

“Hey,” JJ says, smile wide like he’s actually happy to see him. And Pope just stares. He’s older, of course he’s older, but under the clothes and the short, styled hair, and the general air of wealth swirling around him now, he’s decidedly JJ. Pope guesses they found the gold.

“Hi,” he says and moves past JJ, careful not to touch him. He gets his key in the door, a little shaky, turns it.

“I brought you something,” JJ says from behind him as Pope opens the door. He can hear the smile in JJ’s tone, and it hurts.

Pope is standing in the door, and JJ is looking at him in a way that’s making him feel seventeen again and completely heartbroken.

He says: “there’s nothing you can give me,” eyes cold. And maybe that’s unfair but what else was unfair was JJ leaving and then staying gone for three years. What else was unfair was JJ following John B to the end of the world just because. Unfair was Pope wiping JJ’s tears away in the darkness of The Chateau, telling him he’s there for him, telling him he loves him only for JJ to disappear on him and then reappear whenever he felt like it.

JJ’s smile slides right off and, yeah, he’s older but with fear in his eyes he looks just like how Pope remembers him: young, and a little broken, and so beautiful.

“You left,” Pope says, starting to close the door, doesn’t say _you left me,_ like he wants to because what does it matter, anyway.

“Wait,” JJ says, puts his fingers on the door frame instead of the door, a passive plea for mercy that still feels too aggressive to Pope, too invasive. JJ says: “please,” like he’s begging for breath.

“What do you want?” Pope enunciates, because he’s tired, so, so tired, and angry, and he’s feeling like he just started moving on and JJ doesn’t get to do this, shouldn’t get to do this.

“I’m back now,” JJ says, quiet, as if he’s offering something but is afraid it won’t be enough. He’s right, it isn’t.

“Welcome back,” Pope says, like he doesn’t mean it at all.

“Pope, come on,” he says it as if they saw each other yesterday, like they’re back in the Outer Banks, hanging out, and they’re friends and he’s talking about going out on the HMS Pogue and Pope is being unreasonable.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Pope lets go of the door, folds his arms in front of him.

“Can we at least talk?” JJ hunches his shoulders but squares his jaw.

“Talk about what?” Pope is feeling a headache coming on behind his eyes.

“Everything,” JJ says and, then, quieter, adds: “us”, says it as if the words are synonymous and Pope wants to pretend like he doesn’t know what JJ is asking of him, knows he shouldn’t and simultaneously feels the weakness pulling at his heart. He closes his eyes, breaths in, tries to pretend he’s not drowning.

His eyes are shiny when he opens them and says: “I need some time.”

“Time,” JJ says as if the word is foreign in his mouth, and then perks up, “ok, time, I can do time. I’ve got time. I stopped at the Clarion, on Marion street, room 705.”

He steps back, smiles again, says: “I’ll be there, ok? Whenever you’re ready.”

“K,” Pope says, trying not to let JJ’s smile imprint itself on his mind.

He closes the door.

***

Kiara calls him first. Just out of the blue, in the middle of his nap. And they still talk on the phone, all the time so it’s not so unusual but in the middle of the night is a little excessive. He knows what she’s going to say even before he picks up. He opens one eye, still crusted over from sleep and has to hold his phone away from his ear when her voice, loud and chipper, predictably says: “they’re back!”

“I know,” Pope says, his tone not matching hers, at all.

“JJ?” she asks and maybe Pope’s imagining, but he thinks he hears a frown in her voice, and then, like it all clicks, she says: “he came to see you?”. Because she knows Pope never answered any of their calls and this isn’t exactly letter-level-news, though he claimed to not read those, either. So, all that only leaves one option.

Pope grunts an acquiescence into the phone, raises his other hand to rub at his eyes.

“What did he say?” she asks, careful but eager. And then when the silence stretches, adds: “Pope, come on, you have to tell me.”

And he doesn’t have to, but she knows everything else, already, so it only feels fair.

“What could he say?” Pope says, rhetorically, “told me he’s back, said he had something for me.”

“And what did you say?” Kie pushes, with a tone that obviously means she feels like she’s pulling teeth here.

“That I didn’t want anything from him,” Pope shrugs even though she can’t see him.

“Ok,” Kie says, “but how did it really end?”

Pope sits up, wishes he was anywhere but here, says: “He wanted to talk or something. I told him I needed time, so he gave me the address of the hotel he’s staying at.”

“Are you going to go see him?” Kie asks and Pope hates how hopeful she sounds.

“No,” Pope tells her but feels like he’s lying. 

***

And Pope is really not planning to go. Decides almost as soon as he closes the door behind JJ that he won’t be going.

Tell himself that it’s not just a lie he tells Kie, not just a lie he repeats at himself in the mirror in the middle of the night when he wakes up, night after night, like he used to, with JJ’s name on his lips and his breath heavy in his chest.

It goes a little like this: he tells himself it’s silly to feel so raw. Tells himself that JJ and him were never anything, at all. Just a couple of childhood friends that went their separate ways. Goes to class, goes to work, works on his lesson plans.

It goes a little like this: JJ shows up in his dreams, young and blonde, tank top and tan skin, droplets of saltwater clinging to his neck, a smile that eclipses the sun. He dreams of the guilt that gnaws at his toes and fingers in the night, sits on his shoulders like a parasite during the day. It manifests in JJ’s bruised face, in JJ screaming his name, in general feelings of inadequacy, the thoughts swirling around him clear as crystal breaking on linoleum: _you couldn’t keep him, you couldn’t protect him, you never deserved him._

It goes a little like this: Pope wakes up with his breath like lead in his chest, heavy and unmoving. His arms tingling like something is missing, a phantom pain in a limb that was never there to begin with. This old pain, now new again, cuts deep, drenches him in sweat and plunges his head under ice water all at once.

No matter how much he decides to leave this behind, how much he tells Kie he doesn’t need anything, it’s a little like this: Pope wishes he figured everything out sooner, always wished that, back when hope wasn’t a sliver, but a boulder. But he didn’t. And then, it was too late. And he thinks, it’s probably too late, now, too. Because a month has gone by, because JJ is probably gone, because he’s probably too late, again.

Pope goes to the hotel.

He skips the receptionist. Just gets into the elevator as a couple comes out and goes up, up to the seventh floor, knocks on the door. The numbers, 705, are white, edges rounded. He stares at them until they slide away with the opening door.

And it’s a little like this: JJ’s hair is sleep-mussed. He’s wearing a tank top and shorts. He’s barefoot. There are dark shadows under his eyes, a confused look to them as he looks up.

“Hi,” Pope says and feels like he wants to step forward, feels an itch in his fingers that is going to drive him insane. Because JJ looks a lot more like himself right now. He looks like he did back then, almost as if they turned the time back to the day before he left. Pope’s heart clenches.

“Oh,” JJ whispers, steps back, “come in, come in.”

And Pope hesitates but doesn’t feel like he can say no, doesn’t feel like he wants to. The room is dim, blinds drawn up almost completely. It’s not what Pope imagined: no girls or booze or lines of coke on the table, remnants of a week-long party littering the floor. Just two beds, one obviously slept in. A PlayStation connected to the TV, paused mid game, controller tangled in the sheets.

And JJ, a little sheepish, is moving things around like he’s trying to clean up. Says, “I wasn’t expecting you,” like he didn’t say he would wait and moves a single take-out container from the table to the garbage, hides a bottle of Advil in the nightstand

“I wasn’t going to come,” Pope tells him, honest, “I thought you’d gone.”

JJ pauses, turns towards him, sits on the bed, shoulders a little hunched. He smiles, a small weak thing, as he says: “I told you I’d wait.”

He looks tired, like he hasn’t been sleeping.

“I know,” Pope says as if to acknowledge that JJ always kept his promises even if Pope wouldn’t have begrudged him not keeping this one.

Pope sits down on the bed across and a silence stretches, envelopes them in an air of uncertainty. They used to be able to share a silence in comfort. Now, Pope just feels like he’s on pins and needles.

JJ rubs at his arm, say “I missed you,” quiet, like he’s afraid to spook him and Pope doesn’t say it back, but he thinks it, feels it, a longing under his ribs.

“I wrote,” JJ says again, doesn’t look Pope in the eyes. “Did you get my letters?”

“Yeah,” Pope says.

“Did you read them?” JJ asks, quiet, doesn’t mention how Pope never wrote back.

“Some,” Pope admits, “not at first.”

JJ hums, lets slip a bit of disappointment, as if he can’t hold it back.

“I’ve kept them all,” Pope relents, after another silence, then adds: “just in case.”

In case of what? Pope could never say.

“I’m not going to apologize for leaving,” JJ says suddenly, his voice harder and louder, as if he has put all his resolve into that sentence, as if he’s rehearsed it in his mind only for it to come out all harsh edges and off tune tone, “I won’t.”

Pope is surprised, feels his eyes widen, feels his heartbeat quicken. Something bitter spreads itself on his tongue, crawls into his throat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” JJ keeps going, “I’m sorry I didn’t come see you. But I’m not sorry that I left.”

“Ok,” Pope says, and gets up. Feels like he’s not sure where to go from here.

“Is that all you have to say?” JJ asks, looks at him, long and hard, like a challenge.

And Pope can feel the frustration building. He feels the anger, still small but smoldering, growing in the pit of his stomach. “What do you want me to say?” he asks and then, without waiting for an answer says: “Why did you come back then, if you don’t regret leaving?”

“What?” JJ looks confused.

“You said you don’t regret leaving, right?” Pope’s voice rises, “so why did you come back? You should’ve just stayed there. You should’ve just stayed away.”

“Pope, that’s not–“ JJ tries, “I’m not– I said I’m not sorry I left, I didn’t say I don’t regret it.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Pope says because it doesn’t, because it stings, because he doesn’t know why he came, feels like it was a mistake.

JJ comes up to him and turns him around, makes Pope face him head on.

He says: “I had to go,” doesn’t let Pope interrupt him, “I didn’t know how to tell you what I wanted, what I needed. So, I felt like I had to go.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Pope shoots back, “you didn’t _have_ to, you could’ve let John B handle it.”

“I had to,” JJ repeats, “because I never went for John B.”

Pope closes his eyes against the sting in them, breaths deep, and tries to tell himself it doesn’t feel good to hear those words.

“I went for you,” JJ tells him, so quiet, so soft, like a sea breeze, a curl of smoke, “I went for us.”

Pope steps back, removes his arms from JJ’s hands with all the effort he has left, says, with venom: “there is no ‘us’, there never was. You made _that_ pretty clear.”

Pope sees the moment JJ loses his patience, like a twig snapping underfoot, a rope breaking against hurricane winds.

“Yeah?” JJ reels, “and you didn’t?”

Pope doesn’t expect that, can’t react quick enough for JJ not to go on: “I wrote you almost _every day._ You didn’t even read them.”

Pope knows JJ has a point, but he can’t move past the hurt, can’t see past the wrongness that was dealt him.

“And I _still_ came back, I _still_ waited here for you,” JJ’s tone softens, he steps forward but doesn’t reach out.

“I just wanted to give you something,” JJ says, “I wanted to be equal.”

“You _were,_ ” Pope says like he can’t believe JJ ever doubted that.

“At the time, maybe” JJ nods, “but you were going to leave, and I was going to become a memory or, worse, a burden.”

“A burden? No, you would’ve–” Pope pauses, isn’t sure what he wants to say. _Not a burden,_ Pope knows that for sure but can’t _really_ picture it. He settles: “you would’ve been _with_ me.”

“I wanted to,” JJ says, sounds so sincere that Pope aches. JJ adds: “I still want to.”

Pope sits back down on the bed, just on the edge, as if preparing to run, any moment now. He says: “I’m not sure if I can.”

“I wanted to be more to you,” JJ says, so, so quiet, almost a plea to be understood.

“You _were_ more to me,” Pope says, a sad and bitter sound, a regret so tangible it hurts.

JJ puts his palms on Pope’s face. He makes Pope look up.

“I wanted to be able to do more _for you_ ,” JJ explains, looking Pope straight in the eyes and Pope feels like he _gets_ it, like he understands.

He feels his eyes water, feels his hands move, buries his head in JJ’s middle as JJ wraps his hands around Pope’s head.

“I didn’t need that,” Pope says into JJ’s tank top, “I needed _you.”_

“I’m not sorry I left,” JJ whispers into Pope’s hair. “But I _do_ wish I didn’t have to leave you to do it _._ ”

Pope feels like crying.

***

The money is on an offshore account. Sitting there like a sliver of hope to be spun into a dream or a nightmare.

Pope only transfers enough to quit the job at the bakery, send some to his parents.

JJ visits him in his ratty apartment and asks why he wouldn’t just move. Pope goes up the four flights of stairs, each step a con and a pro in his head and doesn’t have an answer when he reaches the top.

JJ moves into town, gets a job he doesn’t need, and comes by every other night, like clockwork.

They sit in Pope’s living room and watch TV. They eat dinner and go out to bars. JJ extricates himself from carefully manicured hands, brushes off their wandering eyes, completely unbothered, on his way to bring Pope a water when the latter drinks one too many. They go home together and sit on the couch and talk. Sometimes, they smoke on the fire-escape, designer weed JJ buys at a top-shelf dispensary now that he can afford shit like that and Pope is not seventeen anymore so he breaths in deep, lets his body relax and his mind swim.

JJ never invites him over. Says, “the place is only temporary” and maybe he means it like a comfort, but it hits Pope more like dread, a cold, slimy feeling, stretching itself along all his limbs, leaving a taste in his mouth.

JJ never stays the night. Pope thinks it’s for the best. Their relationship – a tentative friendship with edges rounded out into uncertainty, sharp shards rare but still littered on the ground for you to snag your ankle on as you pass. It’s fragile. If they push – Pope thinks – it’s going to break. So, he doesn’t push.

Pope goes home for Christmas. JJ hesitates but follows. John B, Sara, and Kie, they all come back, too. John B restarts The Chateau like an old engine: Christmas lights on the roof, light streaming from the inside, music booming.

On the twenty-fourth, Pope kisses his mom, claps his dad on the shoulder and goes out there. They sit in the living room and pass a joint around. Pope is watching JJ who is laughing, bright, animated.

John B says: “man, when are you going to find a place?”

And JJ doesn’t miss a beat, just says: “when Pope is ready to leave his hole-in-the-wall.”

Their eyes meet. The other three burst into laughter around them but Pope feels like he’s thunderstruck, like he’s glued to one spot, frozen in time. JJ smiles, small and hesitant, a fold in between his eyebrows, the only sign of his worry.

Later, outside, on the dock, Pope finds JJ with his feet dangling above the water.

“You never said,” Pope says, sitting next to him.

“I didn’t want to push,” JJ says back, and Pope feels giddy with the thought that this man, who only ever knew how to push, is trying not to. Pope thinks how they’re both cowardly fools and turns to JJ, so that he can wait for him to meet his eyes and kiss his warm, open mouth, like he wanted to do since they were seventeen.

JJ wraps his hands around Pope’s neck, pulls him closer, deepens the kiss in answer.

Someone wolf-whistles from The Chateau, two other voices joining in on the coos and the cheers.

Pope can feel JJ smiling into his lips.

***

JJ applies to college.

Pope wonders why, but never asks.

They rent a small two-bedroom close to campus: an open kitchen with an island, a bathroom with only a shower stall and no bath, a big balcony. They sleep in their separate bedrooms and sometimes label their food.

JJ adopts a kitten even though Pope says he doesn’t want it. He names it “Heyward” just to get on Pope’s nerves.

At the end of long days, Pope sometimes corners JJ in the kitchen as if he wants to kiss him but he never does. And JJ never pushes back, just walks around Pope without touching him and calls for Heyward to give him his dinner.

Pope tries to sleep but, most days, he just lies awake at night even though he’s dead tired, follows the cracks in his ceiling with his eyes and pretends they are the lines of his palms, pretends they can be read like fortune. He pretends that his fortune is a long life, side by side, with someone he loves.

Pope calls Kie and tells her, “I don’t know what to do.” Tells her, “I feel like he’s slipping away.” And Kie reasonably says, “have you tried talking about it with _him_?” Except it feels like JJ is holding something back and Pope is scared because the last time this type of uncertainty hung between them like a veil and Pope dared to pull it back and peek in, he found JJ gone on the other side.

Pope watches him. Watches for movement that looks like running. It doesn’t _look_ like JJ is planning on leaving. He buys furniture and canned food and stocks Purina ONE for Heyward and buys him a scratch-post the tabby doesn’t really feel like using. So, no, it doesn’t _seem_ like JJ is leaving but he’s also not acting like he’s staying. He sits close to Pope on the couch when they watch TV but doesn’t press into him, doesn’t take his hand, doesn’t kiss him, and Pope doesn’t know what to do with himself. Doesn’t know how to tell him: “so, that kiss on the dock, that was what? Nothing at all?” because they never talked about it. Because they just woke up the next day, untangled their limbs from one another, and pretended nothing happened.

Pope doesn’t say anything. Deep down, he’d rather have JJ like this than not at all.

And then, one day, Pope comes home to JJ sitting on the kitchen counter. His ankles are crossed and dangling, his smile – a little nervous. Pope takes his sweet-ass time taking off his shoes and his jacket and his backpack and when he finally comes up to the counter, he sees an open letter next to JJ, laying there, open, white and splayed out like a promise.

JJ says: “I got in,” and Pope says, “oh my god,” tone giddy, reaches to hug JJ only for JJ to duck and kiss Pope instead. His hands are still firmly planted on the counter, lips slow and hesitant, as if giving Pope all the outs in the world.

Except Pope doesn’t want an out, makes this into his “in”. He puts his hands on either side of JJ’s face, slides one of them into the nape of his neck and pulls, until JJ has to put his hands on him to stay stable. JJ tastes like peanut butter, he smells of hope, he feels like home.

Pope pulls back even though he doesn’t want to, afraid this might be their last kiss. But he has to know, has to ask, so he pulls back and says: “I’m happy for you but I’m also really confused.”

And JJ seems sheepish, looks sideways and worries at his lip with his teeth even though he’s still smiling. He says: “I got in, so I’m ready now.”

And it takes Pope a moment until everything clicks into place. His eyes sting, water. He pulls JJ to him hard enough that it means JJ has to slide off the counter.

Pope says: “You’re such an idiot,” and then, through the lump in his throat, adds, “when will you get it? You were _always_ enough.”

JJ doesn’t answer, just hugs him back just as tight. Heyward rubs his head on their shins as he passes.

**Author's Note:**

> One day, I'll write a JJ/Pope fic where 1) they are not moving in together and/or 2) JJ is not eating peanut butter. 
> 
> Obviously, today is not that day...
> 
> Leave a comment. Constructive feedback more than welcome!


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